An ultimate look at Martin Rooney’s ‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts’

“Ultimate Warrior Workouts: Fitness Secrets of the Martial Arts” by Sayreville’s own Martin Rooney, esteemed conditioning coach of UFC, NFL and Olympic athletes, is an inspiring 349-page, all-color travelogue to the international martial arts strongholds of Japan (karate, judo), Thailand (Muay Thai), kickboxing (Holland), Brazil (Brazilian jiu jitsu), Russia (sambo) and throughout the United States (boxing, wrestling). It includes a six-month “Training for Warriors” workout routine that will improve your fitness level with hundreds of illustrated exercises and dozens of challenges. A signed copy is yours by entering the free "Ultimate Warrior Workouts" Sweepstakes here at "Fighting for Life."

Mixed Martial Arts is at a crossroads. Over the past decade, the sport has punched, kicked and grappled its way from fringe popularity to mainstream acceptance. Only a few years ago, MMA was so misunderstood that it was banned from TV. Today, women in hair salons can be found wearing the TapOut shirts they got at the mall, discussing who they think is going to win the next big fight. Young kids are now skipping soccer practice to go and train MMA at their local academy. MMA is no longer a spectacle of “human cockfighting,” as it was referred to by U.S. Sen. John McCain, but has become a full-fledged, completely respected sport.

Now, for everyone who has ever felt the MMA spirit deep within them, world-renowned Sayreville-raised fitness expert Martin Rooney brings “Ultimate Warrior Workouts: Fitness Secrets of the Martial Arts” (Harper, $29.99). Creator of the hit book “Training for Warriors” and companion social media website, Rooney has traveled around the globe to learn the training secrets of the world’s best fighters and bring back hundreds of butt-kicking exercises that are indispensable for any athlete or coach looking for a winning advantage — in any sport or with any fitness regimen.

“My goal with this book is to preserve the physical training techniques of MMA’s component martial arts for future fighters, and to demonstrate how to properly physically train for these components,” said Rooney. “To achieve this, I have spent the past two years traveling like the fighters of old to the homeland of each individual martial art that I believe is essential for an MMA fighter’s arsenal.”

The 349-page, all-color book is packed with hundreds of little-known training secrets from every discipline, including more than 50 types of push-ups, dozens of kettlebell exercises, new ways to use Hojo Undo equipment, and more, as well as valuable advice on mental training, flexibility, and nutrition.

And these aren’t your standard training techniques from the local gym. Rooney journeyed to Russia, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, Holland, throughout the United States and beyond to study with the last living masters in each discipline and discover their training secrets for judo, karate, Brazilian jiu jitsu, the Russian grappling art of sambo, boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai box, and wrestling — all component arts that make up MMA.

“Ultimate Warrior Workouts”is the culmination of an epic quest. More than 1,000 full-color photos reveal hundreds of the original training secrets Rooney discovered along his travels, from the slopes of Japan’s Mt. Fuji and the beaches of Brazil to the streets of Russia.

“Martin is the foremost leader when it comes to training combat athletes. Under the teachings in ‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts,’ I gained valuable strength for my UFC career,” said Frank Edgar, the Toms River-based UFC lightweight champion and assistant coach of the Rutgers University’s wrestling team featured in the wrestling section of Rooney’s book.

A 1989 graduate of Sayreville War Memorial High School, Rooney is a performance enhancement specialist, COO of the Parisi Speed School, and a trainer to world champion fighters for the UFC, Pride, IFL, ADCC, and Olympics. He also has developed one of the country’s top NFL Combine training programs and is the conditioning coach of several members of the New York Giants and Jets.

Rooney holds a Master of Health Science and Bachelor of Physical Therapy from the Medical University of South Carolina and a Bachelor of Arts in exercise science from Furman University. He has a black belt in judo, a purple belt in jiu jitsu and also is trained in Muay Thai and jeet kun do, the mixed martial developed by Bruce Lee. He lives in Fair Lawn with his wife and three daughters.

Enjoy the following multimedia package on Rooney and “Ultimate Warrior Workouts,” as well as a feature article on May 25 in the Health sections of the Home News Tribune, the Courier News and MyCentralJersey.com.

And be sure to enter the “Ultimate Warrior Workouts” Sweepstakes here to win a copy of the book signed by Rooney.

Tell me about the Hurricane, which is a really intense mix of strength and cardio that allows you to maintain muscle mass, while getting a good interval workout.

For the Hurricane, you want to make sure you have a really good athlete because you’re really going to be running fast on a treadmill and getting on and off at high speeds. With a circuit, you can pace yourself how you want, but with the Hurricane, there’s not time to slow down the treadmill from 14 mph.

How do you like working with the Miller Brothers?

If there’s one thing about the Miller Brothers, those two guys are really tough. I know we say that, you know, ‘Jersey tough,’ but those guys are tough.

But nice.

Well, at the highest level in martial arts, everybody I’ve met is so nice. I think that comes along with a level of confidence. When you are really, really tough, you don’t need to be nasty because you’re not afraid. You don’t have fear that makes you inflate yourself to be a nasty guy. I’ve never experienced with these top guys. They’ve always just been real gentlemen, always friendly and always helping people out. Somehow they probably had a lot people helping them out to get to where they’ve gotten together.

So now you have two books that are a must not only for mixed martial artists to get into the shape that they need to be in but for anybody who wants to be in great shape.

It’s 750 pages not just of fitness and not just routines and diet, but it’s five years of my life. People I’ve met, friendships I’ve developed and the network I built to be able to make these things happen.

‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts’ is such an adventure. Like ‘Training for Warriors,’ it offers great training advice, but also is a journey to Japan, Thailand …

…Brazil, Russia. These aren’t like destinations.

Yeah, it’s not Walt Disney World. So what was the Hemingway-like adventure?

I almost have a wanderlust. I wanted to see the world. I always did. I have now been able to use my knowledge as a vehicle to do that.

It was just amazing. For instance, in Russia, I didn’t know what to expect. I still had a cold-war idea that people were going to nasty, but they were warm, and they were so friendly. We got to do amazing stuff. We rode the all-night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg. You meet all the people on the train, you’re reading, you fall asleep and when you wake up you’re halfway across the country in another place.

In Thailand, not only did we meet amazing people, but we went to this crocodile farm. They gave us all access. And I got to hold a Bengal tiger. The photo is in the book.

In Russia, I got to handle a bear. This guy had a bear. I said, ‘Hey, can I hold the bear?’ He put a muzzle on the bear, and I was wrestling with it. In Red Square, I had a falcon on my neck. To stand in Red Square or to stand in the presence of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. I stood in front of Big Ben, Mount Fuji. To see that in the background and know that people had seen that and had the same awe that I had 2,000 years earlier.

Yeah, this wasn’t an exercise book for me. It became a travelogue, where I got to experience the cultures, the food. I tried my best to get a little bit of each language. To spend a couple weeks somewhere, you really do get a feel for the place. You go somewhere for a day or for a layover, you can’t see you’ve been there. My rule is you have to go there for about two weeks, you’ve got to live amongst the people, you gotta eat what they eat, you gotta go where they go, and get the feeling of their sense of humor. Are they open, are they closed.

If you really look at it, I went to the Far East, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, across the United States, South America. I really nailed a lot of the world down. I never would trade it for anything. Now it just has me excited, because I want more. I’m already thinking of the next thing. How can I get to all the places I didn’t get to go?

Isn’t there a possibility of making it into a reality television show?

Sure, without a doubt. We’ve already been entertained by a couple of major networks about the idea. A successful show is about the host, about how engaging it is. I think I can do that.

One of the regrets was we just didn’t as much video. We couldn’t because to make this book, we were doing all-day photo shoots. And I was trying to experience everything too. If we had done that with camera crews and sound-boom guys, it wouldn’t have been the same experience. We wouldn’t have been as mobile. We were on the move the whole time, and we wouldn’t have been able to do the photo shoots, so we kind of had to say, which one are we going to do? But I will say, that is a regret. If they could have captured the adventures we were on and the stuff we saw.

We were at full-stakes karaoke match in Japan. Until you understand how serious people take karaoke in Japan, it’s crazy. Or we were working out on that beach in Brazil, where they made all these weights out of stones.

When you add this project all up over the three years, there was months and months spent out of the country. Imagining trying to condense months and months down into a half-hour talk or a five-minute interview, it’s impossible. But what’s good is that I journaled about everything that I did. So I have really detailed journals of everything we did. So I have what I call bread crumbs. I always have the bread crumbs so I can go back and follow them.

Maybe that was the dry run. If somebody does pick this up as something that they want to do, we have all the contacts now. We did it, so we know what to do.

But video-wise, a company has to see (the vision) because people are still get scared by MMA. But it’s really a travel show that also has some fitness and martial arts in that’s interesting. If somebody could see that, ‘Wow, it’s fitness, and it’s sport. It’s universal.’ Versus, ‘Oh, it’s MMA, and it’s scary, and there are a lot of people who aren’t into that yet.’ I think it could be something that could go.

I’m not a martial artist. I kick box and do fitness boxing to stay in shape, but my wrestling and competitive boxing days are long behind me. Yet, I love doing your workouts because they are really effective, whether for a mixed martial artist or a 46-year-old diabetic like me.

Strength, flexibility and your own fitness is not age dependent. Maybe martial arts is. You’re not going to go wrestle at 46 years old, but you can go train in the same stuff that those guys do, which makes it exciting. My tagline is always, ‘You don’t have to be a warrior and that means you get punched in the face. You can be a warrior and workout and still feel like one.’ When I say ‘Training for Warriors,’ it’s that warrior mentality of what somebody has inside, not that you’re ready to cauliflower ears or take kicks to the ribs. That’s why I think it resonates with people. They get a feel from the photos, that visceral feel, like, ‘Wow, I can imagine what that’s like.’ But then, ‘Wow, I can still do the workouts that these guys do.’

And so many of the exercises that are included are not complex or something that’s impossible for people. And I think that’s why it has a range with different people. Like last night at the book signing, there were young women, there were older women, there were older guys, there were older guys. There were fighters that were there, there were guys that don’t fight at all but are just into it. But everybody got something from that book.

Again, fitness is universal, yet people need to see something. There are so many people who are tired of doing the same mundane workout for 10 years and not getting any results. What I think this also brings is a new edge or a new view or a new picture of exercise that they haven’t seen before but that they can still do.

Everywhere I traveled in the world, they don’t have the technology that we have here in the U.S. They don’t have the equipment. They don’t even have gyms in a lot of places. But what they did have was creativity with the piece of equipment that’s most important, and that’s your body.

In the book, it has 50 forms of pushups and different forms of abdominal work and different forms of work using a partner, which can be really fun. The partner workouts are some of the most fun things I like doing because you’re using the body weight of somebody else, and it’s a great workout. Think about it: What’s more engaging during a workout, somebody else or a dumbbell? Unless you’re workout partner is a dumbbell (laughs). But now it’s more engaging, it’s more challenging, and you’re excited again.

What I’m really trying to do is use the martial arts as a vehicle to get people interested in fitness again.

PHOTO BY LUCAS NOONAN Rooney working with UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar, while instructing the Rutgers University wrestling team in his training system. Edgar is an assistant coach.

When the fitness boom first happened in the mid-’70s, the bodybuilder was the prototype for it. But then bodybuilding went into a direction …

…That the regular person is not ready for.

But people can train and look like fighters.

Oh, for sure. And I think that’s why we’re at that current level of attraction. Even after the bodybuilder, then where did it go? It went to the NFL athlete. But even the NFL athlete got too big. It’s unreachable for a person. But now they see these fighters, and they say, ‘Wow, 150 pounds or a 170 pounds, I could be that guy.’ Not only that – people can argue it – but what requires more fitness than a 25-minute championship MMA match. There are not many things that involve the strength, the power, the endurance, the flexibility. It’s the entire continuum of fitness.

A bodybuilder may have strength, maybe not even much, he just has mass, and he can’t do anything or move, that’s not what people want. And then football, it might be like, ‘Well, wow, these guys are just so huge’ or born to be like that too. But that connection with a fighter … There’s nothing more famous than the kid who really wasn’t much, but he really trained his whole life and became something. Most of MMA is like the ‘Rudy’ of all the sports out there. With football, if you’re not born 6’ 5’’ and weight 350 pounds, you’re not going to be lineman in the NFL, but in MMA, it doesn’t matter how big you are or how small you are or anything else. There’s a place for you, and you can be great if you want to be. That’s a great message to drop to all people.

This book, for me, is a real living example of if you have an idea and you believe in it strong enough and you work hard enough for long enough, it’ll be real. I can remember when this book that is sitting in front of me right now was an idea that I had in my head. I used to picture flipping through it, what I wanted the person to feel and what I wanted them to get out of that. And now this thing is real. And I’ll tell, man, there’s not a page I’m not happy with.

And I’m not that smart. If I can do travel all over the world and write a 384-page book and take the 20,000 photos and meet all the people and create the networks, what can’t you do? I think that has a lot of people excited and inspired.

Rooney, second from right, with Ricardo Almeida, front, and several of the Gracies, the first family of Brazilian jiu jitsu.

You have had a very eclectic sports career. You started as a high school and college track star throwing the javelin with great success, then became an Olympic bobsledder and then became a martial artist, all while also becoming a physical therapist and then a conditioning coach. Tell me about those transitions.

After college, I went to the Medical University of South Carolina. I chose what everybody else wasn’t choosing. I chose to get two degrees at once. I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get my physical therapy degree during the day and my master’s degree (in health science) at night.’ So instead of doing them one at a time and taking six or seven years to do it, I’m going to try to do it all in three-and-a-half or four years. So people thought I was a little nuts, but they offered that dual degree track.

Because I did that I got weekend off that nobody else got off if you didn’t choose that. And on that weekend, my grandmother was sick in Seaside Park. I went down to see her, and that weekend, they were holding an open bobsled tryout at Seaside Heights; just that weekend, and it was the last one that they were holding of the whole thing to select guys. My friends heard I was in the state. They brought me down there because they said, ‘Man, they’re looking for ex-track-and-field guys that are big and strong.’

I went down there. I pushed 400-pound sled 30 meters past the time and got a real tryout two weeks later. I had to call the university. They let me take a leave of absence. I took a semester off. I went up there and I did well enough that I passed the test there, and now I’m on the U.S. Bobsled Team.

In a two-week span, I went from buddy physical therapist to bobsledder. Did the first season with that, went back to school and graduated. Now I’m a physical therapist and on the bobsled team. Spent the next three years traveling around the world, training at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. At that point, my driver and now one of my best friends is Todd Hays, who won the silver medal in the 2002 games. Todd Hays at that time was the heavyweight U.S. Muay Thai champion, and we needed money for our sled, so Todd Hays gets commissioned and goes into one of the first movie documentaries about MMA called ‘Choke.’ So Todd is one of the stars in that, and in the movie, he talks about how he needed the money for our sled, so I went through that whole process with him, watched him train, saw what he was doing and got super interested in MMA.

So then, when I leave the bobsled team in 1998, I come back home, Renzo Gracie just opened his academy in Manhattan, and my buddy from Sayreville, John Derent, starts going, and he brings me. He actually takes me into the backyard and yups up on me with some jiu jitsu, and I say, ‘Man, I’ve got to learn this stuff.’

So we start going to the city. Renzo starts taking a liking to me. Renzo had a vision. What he saw was that there was going to be people just like me because moves weren’t working on me. I was 215 pounds and really strong and explosive. Although jiu jitsu was an art developed for a smaller guy to beat a bigger guy, but thinks start to not work if the guy’s really, really big and strong. He saw there guys like Mark Kerr coming who were going to pose a problem if they started to learn this. So he wanted to learn fitness. He would train me in jiu jitsu, I started becoming his physical trainer, and we started getting results. I start going to PRIDE, and I’m corning guys in Pride.

And then one of his good friends, the Prince of Abu Dhabi, who created the Abu Dhabi Combat Club and the ADCC Grappling Championships, he flies me to Abu Dhabi. Now I’m working with the prince, and the prince is so into my training that the prince starts commissioning fighters to come and train with me. So Sean Alvarez, who was a UFC fighter, Ricardo Almeida, Rodrigo Gracie, all these guys who were up-and-coming started coming to me to train. So right around 2000, I become an MMA physical conditioning coach. At that point, I think maybe I’m the first one. I might be one of the originals because I don’t know anybody else who was doing what I was doing when I was doing it.

So I start training more and more fighters, like Frankie Edgar, the Miller Brothers. I’ve trained world champs in just about every discipline. I’ve trained Olympic athletes who’ve gone to the Olympics for wrestling and judo. I’ve trained PRIDE Fighting Champions, I’ve trained UFC champions, I’ve got tons of Abu Dhabi champions, and world champions in jiu jitsu and judo.

I’ve had an incredible adventure. They’re all my greatest friends and have led to me traveling all over the world. It all gets started because I wasn’t afraid to try something. If I don’t try that bobsled tryout, if I say, ‘Nah, maybe I can’t do it,’ it doesn’t get me to bobsled. And if I don’t befriend Todd Hays and learn about MMA and get interested and then go to Renzo’s, I never have that happen. And then if I don’t take the chance and say, ‘Hey, I’ll go to see the prince,’ and ‘Hey, I can train these fighters, and I’ll do it, none of this stuff happens.’

Just like if I never ask to try to get the book deal, which, by the way, was three years that I kept asking the publisher for a book deal and finally got one. It’s just like if you don’t ask, you won’t get. You gotta have the courage to ask. Take chance. What’s the worse thing that can happen? Somebody says no or it doesn’t work out. You miss 100 percent of the opportunities that you don’t take.

So how did I got from this track guy to all this stuff? I’ve worked really hard, I’ve studied, I’ve learned, I’ve always done my best, but I’ve always tried help people get what they want. What’s funny is by doing that, it’s all come back to help me get what I want. I wanted to travel, I wanted to have experiences. I love sports. Sport is my life. And now by helping lots of people around me get what they wanted, it’s all happened for me.

That’s my story. It’s got a lot of twists and turns. If certain little things didn’t happen, it wouldn’t have happened at all, but that’s everybody’s life.

While ‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts’ is an exercise book, it seems like the main goal is to present each martial with an integrity that will it maintain its integrity, so it won’t get watered down, like say blues and country is to rock ‘n’ roll. People forget about blues and country.

Yeah, for sure. It’s a preservation attempt. I love MMA, and I’m not going to say anything bad about MMA, but MMA you could almost say is it’s own fledgling martial art right now, but there are martial arts that are hundreds of years old that really lived according to codes of honor and codes of discipline that were distinct principles, rules, morals and behaviors that I think really is what makes martial arts great, what changes the person.

Martial arts is not about beating somebody up. Martial arts is about self-development. The only thing that I throw caution out there to everybody: MMA is accelerating at a rapid rate. MMA is maybe sending messaging that is not always conducive to those values. Yet, MMA is a fusion of all those individual arts. I don’t want those arts to disappear at the expense of MMA, and MMA become something that doesn’t offer those things to kids. Because now, there are MMA kids programs, there are other things were if it’s even things like bowing or knowing the creed of your facility or it’s having the 20 principles of some art, those are important, and that’s going to be the thing that carries a kid when he’s older and through his lifetime, not that he learned to punch somebody in the mouth when he was young.

So this was my preservation attempt to show people that not only are there incredible things about these arts that I didn’t know and that’s what you see in MMA, that’s where that comes from, but I wanted to give them a little taste of that philosophy because that’s what everybody needs in the end. I really think I hit the mark on that, and it surprised me. These were things that I learned. I didn’t know there was such depth to the philosophy of Muay Thai or I didn’t know there was such depth to the philosophy behind karate or sambo. Man, it’s deep. People spent there lives just in the philosophical portion.

I wanted to make sure to preserve that. Why can’t you be a UFC fan that has great respect and really is into it for the fighters? When I go to events, I see people booing, I see people cursing, I see blood-thirsty people who want to do some horrible. All I ever see is words on the shirts that are just ‘death’ and ‘rage.’ I’m not excited about that. That’s what I want my kids watching. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

And that’s why I like a Lyoto Machida. If you look at all the true great champs. I like George St. Pierre. You see that respect. Ricardo Almeida bows to his opponents, and he’s bowing to his opponents after fights. It’s still there, but we’re not glorifying that part. I think that is way more powerful than cursing or them trying to fire you up and rip people’s heads off. That’s just my take, but I think we’ll have a whole lot more longevity with honor and respect than we will with hate and anger.

That’s getting deep, but what attracted me most a lot of these martial artists who I worked with is that they were masters at what they did, they were masters of themselves and, man, they were at peace. These guys were cool, and they spent their lives just working on certain things, but they had gained so much from it. Whereas anything you check out on MMA, that is not what they’re selling. I know that’s marketing and that’s media. We want to have that intensity, but this new book I think changes that speed, and I think that people are going to get a feel for that.

PHOTO BY LUCAS NOONAN Rooney throwing 2007 U.S. national judo champion Shintaro Higashi in Japan with the majestic Mt. Fuji in the background.

That’s why it’s important that every fighter and every fan get the book so that they can get a quick distillation of the honor that is in every discipline, even in wrestling. There’s a lot of honor in wrestling.

Oh yeah. It exists in some of the quotes in there. (University of Iowa wrestling coach) Dan Gable has been an influential person in my life. I got to see him speak when I was a kid. They guy is an incredible presenter. He said, ‘More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill, but none have wrestled without great pride.’ There’s a philosophical aspect to that guy who has spent his entire life doing what he’s doing. In the end, it’s about self control, it’s about self development. In the end if somebody asked me, what are the martial arts about, that’s what it’s about. A lot of people ask me, ‘What do you think of this martial art or what do you think of that one?’ And the first thing I say is, ‘Is that teacher giving you what you need? Are you growing from it how you want?’

How many people are really going to be in an altercation? Most of the people I’ve talked to, they’ve never been in a fight in there life. So I don’t care what martial art you’re learning. If you’re gaining from it, your learning important lessons, and you’re really developing yourself and learning about yourself, it’s great. I get that question all that: ‘You saw all these martial arts. Which one is better?’ I’ll say this if the world-class judo guy fights the world-class karate guy, but he fights him in judo, the judo guy will win. If they fight in karate, the karate guy will win. It’s just rules.

You just have to choose what you’re devoting yourself but still have the respect of everybody else. And I saw that everywhere I went in the world. The top, top guys, they got a lot of respect. In MMA, it’s there, but it’s not the part that they’re bringing out and glorifying. I think it could make it even more attractive. Why not have it be people who we want to be like versus people we want to dislike? That’s what they try to create. Brock Lesnar, it’s really cool, but they try to bring him out, and he does his WWF routine, and everybody boos him, and he gives his finger to the crowd. I’m not excited about that. I know he’s probably a lot deeper than that too, but we’re putting on a show. Unfortunately, that seems to be the show we’re selling right now.

I think the martial arts that anybody should partake in in terms of fitness and self development. And I love MMA. I’ve been around MMA for 15 years. It’s been my favorite thing for a long time. Now people are finally starting to get it, and I want them to get IT. If you used to go to PRIDE, the crowd would be dead silent until there was something good that happened. It could have been a submission attempt or an escape, and they would cheer because they understood the sport. In Japan, nobody’s going to dare to boo the guys because they were locked up in a clinch or they were on the ground. They’re waiting for the strategy. They’re watching a chess match. They’re more educated.

That’s what I’m hoping this book will do. People will watch and say, ‘I’m not going to boo. Look there’s some real stuff going on here. They’re on the ground, but there are things happening.’ Not started screaming and booing and throwing my drink on somebody because there’s not enough action for me. I think you can have both. You have to have action, you have to intensity, but I want to preserve some of this stuff so that it doesn’t disappear. Karate schools, judo schools and wrestling schools are all of a sudden their names to MMA schools. When you make that change, I just want to caution to make sure that some of the stuff that made them great before doesn’t disappear just because they want to say that now they’re MMA.

If we’re going to call MMA a martial art, which in a way, we should, it doesn’t have the 100-year history, philosophies and tenants put all together by a few people and then taught to everybody else. Because of that, you see a lot of different stuff. I’ll challenge everybody. Look at the names of the companies involved: the shirt clothing companies, the different MMA schools, the different things. It used to be Master Whatever’s Karate. Now it’s Death Game Armlock Choke MMA. There’s a message that goes with that, and that message is not honor and come on in because we’re here to develop you.

Rooney, second from right top, in second grade at Our Lady of Victories School in Sayreville.

Your parents still live in Sayreville. Do you get back there?

Yeah. Now having kids, at least every two weeks I’m in Sayreville. A lot of my friends have moved away, but I still have friends in Sayreville. My parents are pretty involved in stuff. My dad ran for town council a couple of years ago and lost by 10 votes. I was back, and I voted. Until a few years ago, I was still always voting in Sayreville. I spent the first 20 years of my life in Sayreville.

I was born at St. Peter’s in New Brunswick. My mom was a gym teacher at Cedar Ridge High, which isn’t a high school anymore, in Old Bridge. My dad worked all the way up here in Ft. Lee, but we lived in Sayreville. He had a two-hour drive every day.

I ended up here because this is where Bill Parisi and I founded Parisi’s (Speed School).

How did you hook up with Bill Parisi?

Bill Parisi and I were both at a seminar in Texas. He was a javelin thrower in college too, so we kind of knew each other. And we sat next to each other on the plane. By the end of that plane trip, we just connected. He said, ‘Man, I got this program that’s starting to go, and you are the guy I’ve been looking for to run it.’ By the end of that weekend, I knew this is what I wanted to do. A buddy I knew who had Jets tickets, I lived in his basement for six months. Bill and I got the company to continue to move. We had another facility and then another facility and then we came here in 2000. When we opened this, I bought a house in Fair Lawn.

You were on the ground floor of Parisi Speed School?

Yeah, Bill was still out of a van. Now I’m the COO, and we have 55 locations in 26 states. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 12 years.

There’s an old saying that it takes 10 to 15 years to become an overnight success. The last 10 or 15 years, I’ve been busting my hump, I’ve been killing myself every day, 16-hour days, never stopping seven days a week. And that’s how eventually you get books and people know your name. And that’s how you’re doing interviews like this.

One, you have to courage. Two, you have to have discipline to make it happen. Three, you have to have patience. I’ve been very patient, always doing my best, believing that good things are going to happen. I think this book is going to be the thing that does it. There are a lot of people who have the first book, but I think we people see this book, it’s going to lead to the next adventure.

I can’t stress enough how essential it is for not only a fighter to get these books, but for anybody to get these books because the conditioning that MMA techniques require is so unbelievably effective for anyone compared to almost all other workouts. What’s really cool is that when the six-month training program in the book is completed, you can continue with you as the trainer by joining http://trainingforwarriors.com.

Yeah, it’s a free web site. We have tons of people in the forums. Thousands of videos on there of exercises.

What I wanted to do was create a community where everybody is sharing. That’s what it’s really been. It’s a couple of years old. I think we have over 10,000 people now using the web site. It’s pretty neat. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people. People are sharing their ideas. I’m always out there to help everybody out.

That was my vision: to continue to over deliver and keep putting stuff together. But now if you want to go some place to learn about fighting or to learn about fitness for fighting or just want to learn about fitness in general, that site has it all. It’s got fights, techniques and different arts. Everybody can look up their own stuff. It’s almost like YouTube and Facebook combined: a social media site that people can use if you’re interested in this stuff.

Did the Web site come out of the first book, ‘Training for Warriors,’ in 2007, or did the book come out of the Web site?

The original ‘Training for Warriors’ book was self-published. It was called ‘Training for Warriors: The Renzo Gracie Workout.’ I did that in ’02. So I’ve always called it ‘Training for Warriors.’ The site was already going as I was working on the books. But the ‘Training for Warriors’ book really helped to launch the site. Training for Warriors is a brand name that is now eight years old.

Rooney with his three "warrior" daughters.

You have three unbelievably adorable daughters. And here you are this warrior. What a great think that you work practically around the corner from your house because you get to see these little girls more often than your busy schedule otherwise would allow. Comment on how on you’re a tough warrior who has three adorable little blonde daughters, and you have to balance this busy schedule to spend time with them.

Somebody asked me, ‘What was the hardest thing about making this book?’ The hardest thing was sitting there when your kids are crying, and you have to tell them that you have to leave again for two weeks, not knowing if I was going to get injured where I went, not knowing what was going to happen to me, but trying to keep a strong face on, and then, them not understanding at 7 and 4 and 1 year old that this is all going to turn into something really great. There was this pull that I had to do this mission, but at the same time, the hardest thing was to leave them each time. It was really tough. When you have family and your kids are really important to you, it’s difficult, but I know the best way that I can take care of them is to be something great. I’d rather my kids go to school for show-and-tell with wooden shoes from Holland, a really neat doll from Russia, and they say, ‘My dad was in Russia, and he writes books,’ then to never have done any of these things.

Life sometimes has balance. My entire day is spent with men. I’m with world-class fighters, I’m with world-class athletes, I go to the New York Jets. I don’t even see a woman until I get to my house, and then I’ve got four who are all over me. So I think that might be why it’s the blend. I get my taste of that at home, and when I get out of there, I’m back with the guys.

My oldest daughter was in Tae Kwon Do for a couple of years. We all exercise all the time. They see what I do. At the book signing, some people asked my daughters to sign the book. And, man, that was just the coolest thing. I could see that they were on top of the world because they were signing their names. It makes it all worth it because it was hard. I probably spent six months away over those three years. I mean away. When you’re in Russia, you can’t call anybody. When you’re in Japan, you’re on the exact opposite schedule.

Once I got Skype (Internet calling) it was easier, but it was hard sometimes. It was hard on my wife too because she doesn’t know where I am, but she knows what I’m doing. I broke my teeth in one place. I was getting injured in other places, so there was an element of risk that I think we always were aware of, but at the same time, they know me, and I’m going to make it back.

You don’t go into the book business or the fitness business to make money. But if these things do generate anything, they’re going into college funds. I’ve got three weddings and three colleges. That’s where my mind is already at. I don’t have a ton of time to get there. My one daughter is already 8. That’s 10 years. You have to start thinking about that. That’s in part what this book is about too and why their photo is in there, to bring it back to show everybody, ‘Hey, try to look like this hard guy in this book, but when I go home, here’s how I spend my time: getting beat up by these three warriors.’

About Bob Makin

Bob Makin is a multimedia watchdog reporter for the Home News Tribune, Courier News and MyCentralJersey.com. He has been with Gannett 20 years and a journalist for 34. He also is a former fitness coach specializing in sports-specific training and methods to fight diabetes and heal from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, two illnesses Makin has been able to control through exercise and nutrition. A former competitive boxer and wrestler, Makin relies heavily on mixed martial arts as a form of exercise.

Millions of women suffer from type 1 diabetes and fear the effect the condition may have if they are able to conceive. This article is about type 1 diabetes and pregnancy. If you are looking for information on the symptoms of type 1 diabetes then feel free to visit my site.

Intimately, the article is actually the sweetest on this deserving topic. I fit in with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your upcoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be enough, for the wonderful lucidity in your writing. I will right away grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Fabulous work and much success in your business dealings!

Most I can comment on is, I’m not sure what to express! Except naturally, for the superb tips which are shared within this blog. I can think of a million fun tips on how to read the articles on this site. I do believe I will ultimately make a move utilizing your tips on that matter I could not have been able to manage alone. You were so clever to let me be one of those to learn from your handy information. Please see how significantly I am thankful.

Many thanks for your time and effort to have had these things together on this web site. Mary and that i very much loved your suggestions through the articles on certain things. I realize that you have a variety of demands on schedule therefore the fact that you took equally as much time as you did to help people just like us through this article is also highly liked.

Thank you for a great review and an information packed article.
It was very refreshing to read a reinforcemen fo the philosohy that martial arts goes way beyond just beating some up. It is a way of life that develops excellent health, strength of character and a spirit to achieve anything that you put your mind.

Hiya very nice site!! Guy .. Beautiful .. Superb .. I’ll bookmark your web site and take the feeds also?I’m glad to search out numerous useful information right here within the publish, we want work out extra techniques in this regard, thank you for sharing. . . . . .

Thanks , I’ve just been looking for information approximately this topic for a long time and yours is the best I have found out so far. However, what concerning the bottom line? Are you certain concerning the supply?

strongzz Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your site and in accession capital to assert that I get actually enjoyed account your blog posts. Anyway I will be subscribing to your augment and even I achievement you access consistently quickly.

Youre so cool! I dont suppose Ive read anything like this before. So good to uncover somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. realy thank you for starting this up. this internet site is something that is necessary on the internet, someone with slightly originality. useful job for bringing something new towards the internet!

I drop a comment whenever I especially enjoy a article on a site or if I have something to valuable to contribute to the conversation. Usually it’s triggered by the sincerness communicated in the article I read. And after this article An ultimate look at Martin Rooney’s ‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts’ | Fighting For Life. I was excited enough to drop a thought 😉 I actually do have a few questions for you if you tend not to mind. Is it only me or does it appear like some of the comments appear like they are written by brain dead visitors? 😛 And, if you are posting at additional online social sites, I would like to follow anything fresh you have to post. Would you make a list every one of all your public pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?

An interesting discussion is worth comment. I think that you simply ought to write far more on this topic, it might not be a taboo subject but commonly people today are not enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers

Wow, marvelous blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your web site is great, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article about An ultimate look at Martin Rooney’s ‘Ultimate Warrior Workouts’ | Fighting For Life .

Employment of physical therapists is expected to increase 39 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Demand for physical therapy services will come, in large part, from the aging baby boomers, who are staying active later in life than previous generations did.’,`:

Since we are on the topic of pinging, this is yet another
reason given by WordPress users of why they prefer this blogging platform.

Please make sure you are self hosting your WordPress Blog.
You can add this free blogging platform to an existing domain as the root address
or as a sub domain and there are a lot of good
reasons to choose to go this route.

About this Blog

No other exercise works on strength, power, speed, stamina, endurance, agility, balance, flexibility, mind and spirit all at the same time like mixed martial arts. Mixed martial arts also is the country’s fastest-growing sport and boasts the most pay-per-view sales.